‘We’ve had the craft beer boom, the gin-naissance now rum is in line for a similar resurgence,’ said Alan Titchmarsh, introducing the Best of British feature in his ITV Sunday morning magazine show, Love your Weekend.

He went on: ‘Sales have shown record growth, boosted by microdistilleries popping up all over Britain and these new distilleries are offering a fresh taste on the most diverse spirit on earth.’

Self-styled ‘global rum ambassador’, Ian Burrell, had brought along five rums for Alan and his guests, chef James Martin and TV presenter and farmer, Jimmy Doherty, to taste.

And one of them was from the Isle of Man.

Hurricane is a rum produced by Outliers Distillery, which is based at Ballakelly Farm in Andreas. It was founded by Ian Warborn Jones and Rick Dacey and Rick explained how their rum came to the attention of the show.

He said: ‘Ian Burrell runs the UK Rumfest exhibition which we went to with our rum and it went down really well.’

It was also mentioned by a number of people on Twitter as a best UK rum, and when the TV production company were looking for rums for Love your Weekend they sent a bottle over.

So how did it go down on the show?

Alan, James and Jimmy tasted rum from Merser & Co, which is based in London; the Portsmouth Distillery Co; Copeland from Northern Ireland and Ninefold from Scotland. All were paired with specialist rum mixers from small companies in the UK, including Stratford in London who do a range of mixers tailored for rum.

Their faces were turning noticeably pinker with each drink and an air of mellow happiness was becoming apparent. Then Ian told them: ‘I’ve saved the strongest till last: this one is actually from the Isle of Man, from a tiny distillery called Outlier. This one is 64% ABV, a good, proper rum drinking strength.’

Ian served it with another specialist mixer and a dash of peach puree in the bottom of each glass.

‘Now you’re talking - this is delicious,’ said Jimmy.

‘It’s well named “Hurricane”,’ said Alan, ‘but it’s not remotely harsh - it’s very rich.’

Then Ian asked them which had been their favourite: James said the Hurricane was great but he’d liked the Merser best; Alan said that after five different rums he could no longer remember, and Jimmy chose the Hurricane.

He said: ‘I could drink that all day - it’s super delicious.’

So, a good result for Outliers.